


love worth fighting for

by retrogaymer



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gay Uncle Duck Newton, Gen, Introspection, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 08:11:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15432729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retrogaymer/pseuds/retrogaymer
Summary: Ned loses at arm-wrestling. Aubrey crushes on a girl. Duck reflects.





	love worth fighting for

Duck Newton is an upstanding member of Kepler’s society.   He kinda has to be, if he wants to keep his job as a park ranger - and now, with his extra position, he's gotta keep the regular facade up he's been painstakingly crafting all these years to not draw suspicion to himself.  Don't matter if he has a talking sword on his person most of the time and some projection of a featureless lady appears next to him at 6:14 PM every day - to all his fellow citizens of Kepler, he's just regular old Duck Newton. 

And good thing, too. If he didn't have that layer of normalcy in his life, he'd probably have popped off the deep end by now. 

As it was, he's only halfway there.

At the moment, though, sitting in Amnesty Lodge and watching Ned Chicane lose the fifth arm wrestling challenge in a row to Aubrey Little, Duck Newton doesn't feel much normalcy at all. Not when Aubrey's other hand is clenching so hard in concentration it's started burning a little, and Dani is watching on next to her - hearts in her orange eyes as she cheers on The Lady Flame. 

Duck is fronting like he's not paying attention with the help of a book he's got laid out in front of him about wildlife, opened to a page he's already technically read five times over, but every time realized at the last sentence he zoned out and didn't really read anything at all. He keeps getting distracted by his compatriots actions.

Particularly… Particularly, Aubrey. 

Particularly when she's about to let Ned win out of exasperation, because otherwise he just  _ will not quit, _ but then catches sight of Dani again, and in the next moment has slammed Ned’s hand to the table again. 

They're quite obvious, those two, and it puts Duck on edge. He's not used to it being so… 

Normal. 

Especially not in Kepler, West Virginia.

Sure, the people here aren't  _ overtly _ homophobic - intentionally, that is. Fact of the matter is, though, there are a lot of old folks with misconceptions, and a lot of young folks who don't know any better, and all of them use “Queers” and “Gays” and similar phrasing without seeing the harm. 

Duck's tried to correct them, a few times - and he's been called overly sensitive, those few times. That's when he stopped. But… 

But seeing Aubrey and Dani be so obvious and uncaring about showing their affection, it makes him  _ want _ to care. 

Makes him want to fight, ‘cause there's at least a chance people will listen to him.  A young woman from out of town who's barely been here a couple of months? Forget about it. 

Duck figures, with the standard of normalcy he has set for himself through years of cowardice… Maybe he should put that to good use.  Take advantage of it, to normalise things that should've been normalised long ago. Should keep correcting folks, until it finally gets through that he's not just joshing around. 

And not just for Aubrey, either. She opened his eyes to it, but… He knows he couldn't be the only gay kid born and raised in Kepler, West Virginia. 

So those new gay kids, trying to figure out why they feel so different and wrong, and why it hurts when folks use the wrong words with mislead intentions - he needs to fight for them, too.

And, he supposes, fight for himself.

“Ned, drop it,” Duck finally advises, after the sixth loss in a row old Chicane has suffered while Duck was zoning off. He shuts the book, looks up at all three. “Aubrey's too strong.” He pauses, gives her confused face a contemplative look. “Much stronger than either of us.”

And with that, he gets up.

**Author's Note:**

> i got caught up on amnesty these past three days and duck newton has made me feel so much in so little time  
> justin mcelroy i am begging you on my knees with my hands clasped above my head in prayer. give me gay duck newton. his fear of being abnormal and avoiding the thing about himself that makes him special for his whole life is so relatable please PLEASE,


End file.
